The New York Connecting Raikroad

I just finshed a book on thsi railroad the other day. I had bought it on a trip to the Long Island Railroad Museum figuring it would good to read about another railroad on Long Island. I never suspected it would be anything more than just something interesting to read about. Boy was I wrong.

I had always wondered what it would be like to have a layout that featured car floats. I've been fascinated with them ever since I first saw them on the East River back in the mid 1950s. I didn't understand what they were or why the railroad cars they carried had to make the trip by water. But I learned about them over the years. Reading the book I finally learned the who, what, where and why of these car floats and that they are still used though not at the frequency they once were.

It seems that the Pennsylvania Railroad together with the New Haven Railroad wanted to cut the on water transit time of the car floats that operated between Greenville, New Jersey and Oak Point in the Bronx from the ten hours it took to make the transit. That could only be done by ferrying the cars to Bay Ridge, New York and taking the Long Island Railroads Bay Ridge division directly to Oak Point. This would cut the 10 hour water trip to 1 hour and allow long trains of cars to run directly to Oak Point Yard in the Bronx. The only problem was that the line only went as far as Fresh Pond Junction in Queens. So the Pennsy and New Haven decided to build a line running from Fresh Pond Junction to Oak Point Yard. 

Two problems had to dealt with to build the New York Connecting Railroad. The first of these problems was that the line itself would cross some populated areas of Queens and the City of New York didn't want the trains to interfer with either traffic or become nuisances to the quality of life of the residents of a good part of Queens. That meant that road would either have to transit the area above or below ground level. The second problem was the fact that Queens and the Bronx are separated by bodies of water including one which was heavily influenced by tidal flows and known as Hell Gate.  This would require 5 major bridges including the famous Hell Gate Bridge. In addition most of the trackwork would have to built on viaducts to allow enough altitude for major ships to pass under the various bridges and other trackwork. The line was complete in 1917 just in time for US participation in World War I. But this wasn't the end of construction.

The Pennsylvania Railroad cross into Manhattan under the Hudson River thru tunnels that allowed them to build a maginificent structure known as Pennsylvania Avenue. This once stood in the area occupied by Madison Square Garden and Us Post Office today. The uderground part of the station is still used by Amtrak, the Long Island Railroad  and several other railroads. Passenger trains came into the station and unloaded their passengers and pulled thru another tunnel into the Sunnysode Yard in Queens for servicing. The New Haven Railroad also wanted to use Pennsylvania Station for their passenger runs from New Haven, Connecticut and they wanted to run thier trains across the Hell Gate Bridge to do so. So an extension was added to the new trackage to the new bridges leading to Oak Point Yard from Sunnyside yard. That's one of the reasons why the bridges have 4 tracks on them.

So what does all this have to do with me you might be asking? I'll tell. The answer is found on page 11 of the book I mentioned earlier. Its a track plan outlining the route from the car float aprons in Bay Ridge thru several yards and onto the tracks leading to Oak Point Yard in the Bronx. It's got everything I ever wanted on a layout. And it solves a problem of getting traffic onto and off of my layout without having to resort to staging yards that would eat up lots of space that I didn't have. So the car floats will serve as a way of interchaging cars with an off layout area that connects to places south and west of the layout. I can also have traffic going to New England and places beyond that as well.

So know I have something to follow in creating workable track plan that features point to point operations with an optional method to provide for continuous running if i need it. You'll find the map I am using as the basis for my layout below.